Rudolf Klimmer

Rudolf Klimmer (1905-1977) was a German psychologist and sexologist who was an early gay activist, most notable for his work in the German Democratic Republic.

Rudolf Klimmer
Born(1905-05-17)May 17, 1905
Dresden, Saxony, German Empire
DiedJuly 26, 1977(1977-07-26) (aged 72)
Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany
NationalityGerman
Alma materUniversity of Leipzig
OccupationPsychologist, sexologist
Political partyKPD (1926-45)
SED (1946-77)

Biography

Klimmer was the son of renowned veterinary professor Martin Klimmer, and attended medical school at the University of Leipzig. In 1926, he joined the Communist Party of Germany while continuing his studies, and he earned his doctorate in 1930. His career was cut temporarily short when the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s, and he worked for a time as a ship's doctor for the Hamburg America Line in the Americas and Asia. He returned to Germany in 1934 and became the senior physician at the Bethel Institution in Bielefeld. Due to his political affiliations, however, he was jailed twice by the Nazi regime in 1938 and 1941, for sentences of five months and a year, respectively, and was banned from medical practice. Nonetheless, he continued to perform medical research for Schering AG throughout the duration of the war.[1] He married a lesbian in the 1930s to avoid the persecution of gay people in Nazi Germany.[2]

After the war, Klimmer opened up a psychiatric practice in Leipzig, and joined the Socialist Unity Party, the ruling party of the newly formed East Germany. Using his political ties, he attempted multiple times to repeal Paragraph 175 from the criminal code, which prohibited homosexuality. In 1954 Klimmer personally asked Walter Ulbricht, the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, to decriminalize homosexuality and repeal Paragraph 175, to no avail. He became director of a sexual health institute and formed a committee to lobby in the Volkskammer. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he wrote pro-gay works, but had to publish them in Hamburg due to publishing restrictions in the East. Thanks to his tireless work, no more convictions were made in the East under Paragraph 175 after 1957, and his efforts, along with those of Kurt Freund, pushed the GDR to fully decriminalize homosexuality in 1968, a year before West Germany.[3]

Klimmer died in Wuppertal in 1977, while visiting relatives in the West.

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References
  1. Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller: Mann für Mann. Ein biographisches Lexikon, suhrkamp taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. 557f.
  2. McLellan, Josie. Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  3. Manfred Herzer, J. Edgar Bauer (Hrsg.): Hundert Jahre Schwulenbewegung, Verlag rosa Winkel, 1998, ISBN 3-86149-074-9, S. 55.
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